Review: Emperor of all maladies part 4: Discoveries timeline

Discoveries

• 2625 BC Imhotep describes breast cancer for the first time in recorded history
• 1775 though not described as such, soot discovered as first preventable carcinogen in chimney sweeps
• 1761 1^st published article that tobacco causes cancer
• 1832 Thomas Hodgkin distinguishes lymphoma from TB and syphilis
• 1845 Leukemia discovered and described as spoiled blood
• 1860 most common children’s leukemia—acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)—first described
• 1880s Leukemia cells first discovered “hiding” in the brain
• 1898 Carl Sternberg classifies malignant lymphomas
• 1913 Mammography developed, but not used for decades because A) discovered in Berlin right before the Nazis forced Albert Salomon to flee and B) since Halstead had convinced the world to perform mastectomies no matter how big the tumor, it didn’t matter
• 1919 It’s discovered that mustard gas has specific affinity for destroying bone marrow—specific affinity becomes one of the key criteria for chemotherapy drugs
• 1928 Pap smear test developed—not accepted as useful until the 50s
• 1948 Two major epidemiological studies, one in US and one in UK, begin to link smoking to lung cancer
• 1951 1^st prospective epidemiological study on smoking uses sample of 41,000 doctors. Read that again: 41,000 DOCTORS are the sample for a smoking study. 
• 1954-1964 Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center test 214,900 different compounds on 1 million mice, looking to see if anything could be used for as a chemotherapy drug (most could not)
• 1950s and 60s: Howard Skipper performs series of tests in mice to discover A) chemo is an iterative process, so multiple regular doses are required even if the 1^st dose manages to wipe out 99% of the cancer cells at the time and B) proved that using multiple chemotherapy drugs simultaneously created synergy
• 1962 Tamoxifen invented as a birth control pill—fails miserably at that
• 1963 Mammography finally tested in research
• 1968 Elwood Jensen discovers estrogen receptors in cells
• 1984 Barry Marshall experiments on himself to prove that bacteria can cause cancer by drinking a culture of helicobacter pylori
• 1985 An epidemiological study shows that better screening techniques were responsible for saving as many lives as the best new treatments
• 1990s Genetic work shows that at least 4 gene mutations are needed to create cancer: each pair of oncogenes (accelerators) must be mutated to be permanently on and each pair of tumor suppressor genes need to be inactivate